Sea Floor Spreading In The Arctic Ocean

Plates grow by pulling apart at the mid-ocean ridges and sinking back into
the earth's interior at the tranches, mostly around the rim of the Pacific. As
plates grow, they create strips of progressively older crust on either side of
the ridge. We can determine the age of the ocean floor by drilling into it an
retrieving samples, but mostly because newly formed crust is slightly magnetized
by the earth's magnetic field, and we can compare the magnetism of the sea floor
with the history of changes in the earth's magnetic field. North America began
to separate from Africa about 180 million years ago.

The earth has two kinds of crust. The continents are mostly made of thick
granite. When continents pull apart, the gap is filled by thin crust made of
basalt. In plate tectonics, a continent is any piece of continental crust
surrounded by oceanic crust or plate boundaries. Greenland is a continent. When
North America and Europe began to pull apart about 90 million years ago,
Greenland originally moved as part of Europe for about 30 million years. Then
the crust broke on the east side of Greenland, leaving it a separate plate for
about 30 million years before it finally attached to the North
American Plate.

On the colored diagrams, land is brown, and submerged continental crust is
tan. The bluish gray area, labeled Submarine Volcanic Plateau, includes large
areas of sea floor where thick accumulations of lava flows built up. This color
also indicates areas where the exact age of the sea floor is uncertain.

The Arctic Ocean is just the northern extension of the Atlantic. A small piece of crust that separated from Europe is completely
submerged and runs across the Arctic Ocean from northernmost Canada to Russia.
This strip of crust is called the Lomonosov Ridge. In 2001 Russia claimed that
it was an extension of Russia's sea bed and in 2007 an expedition deposited a
Russian flag on the ridge at the North Pole. Canada and Denmark (which
administers Greenland) also are exploring the ridge with possible intentions of
claiming portions of it. The Western half of the Arctic Ocean probably formed
when a piece of northeastern Siberia broke away.

Iceland is not continental crust at all. There is a long-lived source of
magma called a hot spot beneath Iceland. Iceland is made up entirely of volcanic
rocks and is really an exposed part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

Possible Coloring

Labeled Features

In addition to the large plates, significant small plates are labeled. Very small plates
are not labeled.